3.23.2010

Filosofía del lenguaje / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Philosophy of Language

Mr. Pedro Emilio Coll once again insists that the adjective provides language with a contribution of subjective value. This judgment demands a redress: the most qualified authors in the matter distinguish the adjective preceding and the adjective following the noun, they begin from the fundamental maxim that the order of words translates the order of ideas, and they understand that noun and adjective oppose each other like substance and phenomenon, a more intimate distinction than the superficial one between subject and object. They continue from consequence to consequence until they sustain that the entire phrase assumes emotional color when the adjective goes before the noun, and takes on an impersonal value in the opposite case, because they notice the discourse is characterized by whichever of the two words, adjective or noun, is written first. So then, the adjective only offers and communicates a subjective value when it governs the phrase somehow, coming before the noun. These principles have already been applied to the Romance languages, and more than one author has discussed the adjection of the oïl language and the adjection of Cervantes. It goes without saying that the brilliant herald of our race accommodated himself intuitively to the truths of arduous metaphysics that govern the science of language. As a gift to the reader, we omit the list of philologists who have hurried this matter, because they are teutonic professors, more or less bound and very wise, and all of them with rebellious and stony surnames.